An excerpt from the lead article, "The Next Step" in Manas, April 10, 1985:
In 1894 a child was lost in the forest near Hampshire in England. Who was the child? He was Richard St. Barbe Baker, and this little boy lost fell in love with the trees. As Paul Hanley, who lives in Saskatchewan, where St. Barbe went to school, has said in the current Structurist:
For nine decades that child will grow in his affinity for trees; their fate will be entwined with his own. He will mobilize people on every continent to plant and protect trees; he will awaken thousands to the oneness of humanity and all living things, and to the healing of the earth. He will be the Man of the Trees.
Let us have no more talk of self-interest as the only spring of action in human beings.
After interviewing St. Barbe in 1977, journalist Cameron Smith of the Toronto Globe and Mail wrote:
Dear Dr. Baker,
As the forests are the fountains of life, so you stand at the headwaters of consciousness. May we all join you there one day...
Richard St. Barbe Baker visited Northern Ireland in June of 1978. He stayed for two nights at our home in Londonderry.
I remember that—as a considerate guest—he had with him a ‘sheet sleeping bag’, so as not to use our bed linen! When the word got around that he was in the city, we had visitors to the house. People seemed to regard him with awe, including a local solicitor, David Gilliland, who called to see him. Mr. Gilliland lived in a grand, historic, riverside house, Brooke Hall, set in a demesne, with an arboretum that contained several Redwoods. We duly went to visit this collection of trees, and I was treated to the spectacle of St. Barbe hugging one of these giants!
While in the city, St. Barbe gave a well-attended talk at Magee University College, a part of the New University of Ulster, and he also planted some trees there. In St. Columb’s Park, he planted a Horse Chestnut with the then Lord Mayor of the City.
St. Barbe was taken to Coleraine, and gave a talk at the main campus of the New University. After Londonderry, he went on to visit other Northern Ireland Bahá’í communities.
Not that long after the visit, I became a member of ‘The Men of the Trees’ (MOTT) and then moved to Omagh. In 1987 I was involved in the formation of a Northern Ireland Branch, the second of the four regions of the United Kingdom, after England, to have a MOTT presence. Even then, there were probably 30 members in Northern Ireland. I have continued to be part of the Branch Committee ever since. For a period I also served on MOTT’s National Committee.
From the start, the Northern Ireland Branch was, and is still, involved in visiting and educating primary school pupils on the importance of trees, and planting trees with them on their schools’ invariably bare sites. Furthermore, the Branch has regularly contributed to government consultation documents, frequently referring to St. Barbe’s ideas as a solution to situations that are presented.
Richard St Barbe Baker: what charisma! What single-mindedness! He came across as someone from another age, extremely polite and formal; small talk didn't seem to come easy, probably due to his Edwardian heritage. His invention of ‘social forestry’, however—involving ordinary people in the planting and protection of trees on a massive scale—was a seminal idea. And the logic that, for safety, one third of the land area of the Earth should be growing trees, cannot be faulted.
Without doubt, Richard St. Barbe Baker was a very original thinker—with the physical, social and spiritual health of planet Earth foremost in his mind.
MALCOLM LAKE
Omagh, Northern Ireland
March, 2005
